Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday December 26, 2013 @10:23AM
from the right-to-pay-for-faster-connections? dept.

Ars Technica takes a look at two sides of the world of internet service, as it's available to customers in the U.S., and especially at changes that are in the works for the next year. Thanks to Google, AT&T and other providers (including municipal networks), the number of Americans with access to very high speed household connections is rising dramatically — good news, for those in range of fiber-to-the-home rollouts, and this means at least some pressure on competitors. But as Ars writer Jon Brodkin points out, there are also developments that may dismay many customers, specifically the possibility that the Federal Communication Commission's 2010 Open Internet Order ("a network neutrality law that forbids ISPs from blocking services or charging content providers for access to their networks") may be overturned or weakened. That could come about either through lawsuit (Verizon's suit is mentioned), or through a more market-oriented approach from the FCC. Writes Brodkin: "If the law were overturned, ISPs could more easily steer customers to their own services and away from those of their rivals. They could charge companies like Netflix for the right to have their videos prioritized over other types of Internet traffic, perhaps indirectly raising the price consumers pay for streaming video and making it more difficult for startups to compete against established players who can afford the 'Internet fast lane' fees."

I don't give a damn about any of them, except the militant fucks. The unshaven fat fucks you describe are beneath contempt, just as any other fat fucks who are to impotent to make a difference in the world. The militant assholes who file a court case every time the hear the name of Christ (or Allah, or Buddha, or Jehovah) are the ones who need to be dragged out behind the barn, for an appointment with a.22 long rifle behind their ears.

The militant assholes who file a court case every time the hear the name of Christ (or Allah, or Buddha, or Jehovah) are the ones who need to be dragged out behind the barn, for an appointment with a.22 long rifle behind their ears.

Please tell me you're not a Christian, because that was the most unChristian statement I've heard all week, and since yesterday was Christmas it was especially distasteful.

Yes, I am a Christian. I'm not the imaginary Christian that everyone expects to turn the other cheek though. Distasteful as you might find it, some Christians are willing and able to stand up for themselves.

AC above, for instance, imagines that those militant atheists are standing up for his rights. Little does he understand that it was Christians who saw to it that the freedom of religion was enshrined into our constitution.

I'm not the imaginary Christian that everyone expects to turn the other cheek though.

You should try it, it works. Fighting hate with hate just feeds the hate, love dissipates hate. Those militant atheists? How can you hate the pitiful? The poor fools are doomed unless they see the light.

There's no room for hatred in Christianity; hatred is from Satan. Love those who hate you, do good to those who persecute you. That is the essence of Jesus' message.

Where does hate come in to this equation? When and where did I imply that I hate anyone? Are we speaking the same language?

If you walk out into the street of your home town, and find a pack of wild dogs attacking a child, what do you do? I would destroy the dogs. Not because I hate the dogs, but because the child has more value to society than any number of dogs. Hate? Being filled with hatred of dogs would impede your ability to deal with the threat to the child. Hatred cripples you.

Where does hate come in to this equation? When and where did I imply that I hate anyone?

You said "The unshaven fat fucks you describe are beneath contempt, just as any other fat fucks who are to impotent to make a difference in the world. The militant assholes who file a court case every time the hear the name of Christ (or Allah, or Buddha, or Jehovah) are the ones who need to be dragged out behind the barn, for an appointment with a.22 long rifle behind their ears."

Never heard of 'fundamentalist atheism', most of the self-identifying atheists I meet are 'evangelical atheists' who loudly preach their ideology. There are some 'practicing atheists' as well, much more tolerable, they have the decency not to insult people who disagree with their dogma and only get into a philosophical argument if someone else is interested in the debate.

met my fair share who are definitely fundamentalist, and want to do me a favor by barring me from my religion.frankly they're no different from the people who want to do me a favor by saving my soul for me by converting me to their flavor.what i actually want is of no consequence to either type.

Most athiests, like most Christians, won't shove their religion or lack of same down anyone's throat. "Fundamentalist" atheists (I kind of like that phrase, never heard it before) have to troll every slashdot story explaining to everyone how fucking stupid we are because we're not atheists. They're like the damned Jehova's Witnesses as compared to a normal Christian who usually only discusses religion when warranted (such as a question is asked

I'll just add (at the risk of getting flamed, derided, or insulted) that there are very good arguments from Systems Science that it is impossible to prove one or the other. For every argument for, there is a counter argument; and vice versa. So let's all just get along, and accept that other people may have thought things through just as intelligently as you and I have, and come to different conclusions.

If the FCC decides Net Neutrality is no good, I would suggest sites pass the new costs to end users.

We've detected your ISP is Comcast. Due to fees Comcast charges YouTube to deliver content to you, YouTube is no longer free on Comcast. If you would like to continue using YouTube, you must change your ISP or pay YouTube $X/mo to offset this cost. We are sorry Comcast has decided to double charge you. Thank you for using YouTube

In other words, it's like when a cable company's contract with a local TV station is up. For three months you get end-of-the-world warnings about LOSING YOUR KZZZ TV CHANNEL!!!1!!11ONE~!!1 (as though it were not possible to watch it any other way but through the officially blessed One True Cable Box*), but at the last minute, a new contract is signed, just in time. (Or after maybe one token day of black-out just to remind the plebes that their fate is entirely at the mercy of CocksWeener CableCo.)

Interestingly, my GF and her daughter are both cutting the cable and buying HD antennas. They get more *useful* channels - especially local and regional news, better quality (mostly), real HD, and a price of $0 per month. They won't be getting various cable channels but they weren't really watching any of them but the Weather Channel.

For wired connections, that may be the case. But I have no contract unlimited data for $30/mo. [t-mobile.com] That's less than half the price I pay for cable, and the 4G is as fast as cable. I'm teetering on cancelling cable already.

I am on Verizon Wireless, and used that as my internet connection for a couple of years, including my job as an IT person. I'm not a big movie watcher or anything, but it was fine for quite a while. I did finally sign up for cable internet (no TV, no phone) because I needed a fixed location for some web server testbed and document storage that required a fixed base. But I'm typing this on my laptop running through my phone in a friend's apartment in Miami. Verizon Wireless can get expensive as the data

That would be exactly the proper cure. The chances we see it are negligible.

Remember when credit cards came out? Retailers marked their products with two prices - cash, and credit. Credit card companies went to state legislators and to court to have that practice curtailed. The end result was, we all pay more, so that credit card users can pay the same price as everyone else.

I've seen a few gas stations saying this. And doing this (offering a cash discount) is perfectly legal.

I would just like to see more places that do debit and credit (that don't charge more) asking people to use their debit cards (AS debit cards) whenever possible because it saves them CC Transaction fees - and thus saves THEM money because they don't need to raise their prices to pay for the fees).

Different jurisdictions have different laws, of course. You must have seen MacDork's post above. The state of New York seems to have passed a law the imposed criminal penalties on retailers who charged for credit card use. The courts have placed an injunction against imposing that law.

When I was growing up, my home state did indeed make it illegal for merchants to add any credit card surcharge. In the decades since, I've seen those "cash discount" prices you mention. I would be hard pressed to remember

> It should be perfectly legal, and publicly known, that credit card transaction fees are charged> to the person making the purchase

It should but its actually a complicated problem; mostly due to the way card processing works now.

My knowledge of this comes directly from my Wife, who worked in the POS industry (that is sale and setup of cash registers and assorted paraphernalia) for several years.

Basically, what you see, and I see them around too...mostly at gas stations, is the "two price" scenario, one for cash, one for credit. It may be described as a "cash discount", but I have never seen it called a "credit fee", and part of the problem is...the fees are NOT fixed, they vary from card to card.

So, if Alice and Bob both walk into Carolmart on the same day, of the same year, at the same time and buy the same item, they will both pay the same price. However, if Alice uses her Capital One Card, and Bob uses his Discover.... Carolmart will, in fact, actually be charged two different fees!

That is right, if you have a card with "Cash back" or some "rewards program" they actually charge the retailer who takes the card more to cover the rewards! So if they really were to implement such fees, the fee would depend on what card you use (as well as other factors like how much business the store does).

There is some ability to deny specific cards: this is the very reason "American Express" is commonly not accepted because they have some of the higher fees (ditto for discover). However this breaks down a bit when you factor in how many different cards all work under the VISA or MASTERCARD brands.

Not saying any of this isn't fixable, just that its grown up somewhat complicated and there is a lot of interest in not fixing it or making it more transparent.

Oh, it's definitely complicated. A lot of that nonsense is easily fixed though. You have kinda indicated as much. Each of the state legislatures can easily pass a law that forbids those cash-back refunds, and sets a limit to transaction fees. Or, if the CC companies want to take all those laws to court, then congress can address the issue with a similar law.

Actually, I think I prefer a law passed by congress. Credit cards are pervasive in our society, and few of us live in insular communities today. J

Well if the states start passing such laws, the credit card companies will push for congress to pass one themselves. That is how things seem to work across every industry. First they oppose any and all regulation federally or local. Then a few local areas pass it....and suddenly they are faced with compliance with different codes in different places....and a single federal law starts looking like their best option, so they push for that.

I bet all you really need is 2-3 states to pass their own laws, prefera

My problem with the whole concept is this idea that an ISP should be able to go to a content provider, who isn't their customer, and threaten to degrade their own customers service; which he paid for; if the content provider doesn't pay.

The customer paid for internet access. If he requests content from google, he should get it and get it in a similar timely manner as any other site; and if he doesn't, it really shouldn't be the fault of the very people he is p

Why do you think Google has been laying dark fiber? So when Comcast starts that shit, they'll just look them in the eye and say "Do you really want another Austin or Kansas City?" Not that they want to light it up, but to use it as a threat.

They finally flipped the switch and capped their "unlimited" internet to 300GB. They will automatically upgrade my service (with increased monthly fees) for every 50 GB over the original 300 GB. I can manually downgrade my service back to the original 300 GB whenever I feel 300 GB is enough. Xfinity video service doesn't count towards the cap but YouTube and Netflix does.

Other shenanigans from Comcast includes: Charging extra ($35) for the battery inside the cable modem to keep the telephony working during blackouts and starting in January they will charge $2 each per month for the simple digital converters they gave for free more than 3 years ago when they eliminated their analog signal. Funny how it was free when converters were on sale everywhere. Now that the supply dried up, they'll start charging for what they gave away.

You do realize those converters were for OTA TV not cable? Comcast loves the converters as there is effectively nothing that is not encrypted anymore. This means they no long have to send trucks to the projects etc to turn off peoples cable.

My phone is wireless, so it wont work in a power outage anyway. But I asked the comcast rep about the battery in the modem, and according to her, the phone would keep working even without power or the battery.
I don't believe her.

It's already on a UPS. The thing that irritated me the most was that while I was out of town they upgraded my cable modem with a self install kit. The person who did the install left the rechargeable battery in the old modem thinking that the new modem had a battery in it (they are both Arris brand). It wasn't until I returned later that week and noticed that the new modem was lighter than the old one, that I discovered that they no longer send a battery with the cable modem. When I called Comcast about it,

Like most US infrastructure, the United States internet build out has lost it's premiere status on the world stage. Overtaken by the higher per capita government investment from much smaller economies, or simply [i]smarter[/i] per capita investment in some cases: the US consumer has a depressing selection of options available to them. In many areas, higher download speeds are actually available through next generation wireless technologies such as 4G LTE than can be found from their local ISP. Some may cons

By all means get rid of net neutrality, with one caveat: The Verizon's, AT&T's, Comcast's et al of the world must not be allowed to sue either local municipalities or the federal government for creating their own competing delivery systems when it comes to high speed access. And as soon as said companies file a lawsuit the networks of named litigants are immediately open to other network and content providers (aka Optimum) to provide services for as long as the lawsuit is active.

Nice optimistic idea, but long term it won't work like you think. The entrenched powers are too powerful and the system is way too corrupt; including the incompetent citizenry.

BTW, bogus meaningless lawsuits can shutdown small players and even if you can fight them without going broke, their law firms against your cheap lawyer can make you lose even the obvious cases. I've seen it happen in my area where "cable" in the contract agreement was defined as TV only because it was signed in the 80s so internet a

Also. The FCC is filled to the gills with politically well connected, revolving door sycophants there to do industry's bidding before jumping back on the gravy train. It's the poster child for a watchdog agency overrun and infested with regulatory saboteurs and common's-hating overpavers.

What we ought to do is just let Munis have community WIFI. They have actually been stopped by the courts by the telcos. Sorry, but that is just corruption. The idea that private corporations can stop the democratically elected local governments from enacting laws which are otherwise not unconsitutional is new to me and I wonder where the legal basis for such comes from.

People need to wake up and educate themselves as to what's at stake here. Allowing auction style bidding wars for bandwidth to deci